US' Biggest Landfill To Become New York City's Biggest Solar Project

New York City will convert roughly 47 acres of land at the Freshkills Park on Staten Island into a 10-MW solar installation, five times bigger than any other system in the city and boosting the city's renewable energy by 50 percent, according to officials. SunEdison, which won the public bidding process , will lease the land to design, build, and operate the facility, with construction reportedly beginning in late 2015 and online within a year . Freshkills opened more than half a century ago and quickly became the largest landfill in the world; at its peak in the 1980s it took in tens of thousands of garbage per day as the city's primary solid waste landfill, with four landfill mounds amounting to 150 million tons of solid waste. At one point it was the largest man-made structure, taller than the Statue of Liberty and reportedly visible from space . It was officially close...